Energy Futures, Human Values, And Lifestyles


Book Description

The contours of our energy future are most clearly presented as hard and painful choices. We can, for instance, maintain-perhaps even greatly improve-our current living standards, but at tremendous cost to our environment and to our physical and human resources. Alternatively, we can opt for a more humane society and in many ways a richer life with







Earth And The Human Future


Book Description

During the second half of the twentieth century, great changes have occurred in the natural sciences, spawned by the leap forward in physics during the war years and the growth in understanding of earth's history and place in the cosmos. Also, with the new and terrible consequences of full-fledged war, the nuclear age has brought to the fore the ne




Families and the Energy Transition


Book Description

Originally published in 1985. This volume on household energy conditions considers the energy crisis in the United States and offers an important appraisal of the future of energy consumption by families and the family's adaptations to decreasing energy availability. The chapters in the first section investigate the cultural dimensions of energy use at the household level, looking at attitudes and trends. The second section considers energy policy, especially conservation, with a special chapter on elderly households, while the third presents case studies and projections of the future patterns and changes in energy consumption. This is a fascinating snapshot of thinking on families and the effects of energy use.




Routledge Library Editions: Energy


Book Description

Reissuing works originally published between 1964 and 1994, this set of ten volumes is an excellent collection of works on energy – production and consumption, economics and policy, conservation and the crisis. International in scope, the volumes look at household energy conditions, energy in the developing world, political history and various other issues within the world of fuel and power. This set is a resource for environment studies, economics, policy and politics, sociology, geography and other studies considering the use of energy in our world.




Crude Power


Book Description

Many people in the world today believe Bush's war against Saddam Hussein is only about oil. Iraq has the second biggest petroleum reserves in the Middle East, and America's relations with its prime supplier Saudi Arabia have turned sour in the wake of 9/11. Invading Iraq, so many argue, is merely colonising an oil field. Oil has transformed the world and remains the most important resource of our age. It has made the wealth of millions of people - from Venezuela to Norway via the Persian Gulf - and holds their futures in its fortunes. The Middle East is the earth's greatest petroleum depot. It is also the most explosive region in the world today. Now more than ever, with the global economy under severe threat, oil is of prime geopolitical concern. Crude Power provides a comprehensive analysis both of the world's dependency on Middle Eastern oil, and of the very dangerous way politics and economics play themselves out in the oil game - as producers and consumers tug at each others' interests. It is a tug of war: Oystein Noreng explains what all concerned are fighting for. Placing OPEC (the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries) into its wider world context, he examines in detail how shifting oil prices affect everything from international trade balances to inflation rates. In the current political climate of the Middle East and Central Asia, with anti-Americanism and the threat of terrorism in such countries as Saudi Arabia running high, oil holds the future of the world economy as well as thousands of lives in its hands. Crude Power is an indispensable book for anyone concerned with the fate of the world today, and that most important of issues: the interplay of power and money in the Middle East and beyond.




Negotiation in Decentralization


Book Description

The Chinese government set a target to reduce China’s carbon intensity by 40%-45% in 2020 at its 2005 level. To achieve this target, the government has allocated targets to provinces, cities, and large enterprises, and selected five pilot provinces and eight cities for CO2 emission trading. Such emission trading process will involve decentralization, optimization, and negotiation. The prime objective of this book is to perform academic research on simulating the negotiation process. Through this research, a methodological framework and its implementation are set up to analyze, model and facilitate the process of negotiation among central government and individual energy producers under environmental, economical and social constraints. Negotiation In Decentralization: Case Study Of China's Carbon Trading In The Power Sector discusses research carried out on negotiation issues in China regarding Chinese power sector reform over the past 30 years. Results show that conflicts exist between power groups and the national government, and that the most current negotiation topics in China's power industry are demand and supply management, capital investment, energy prices, and CO2 emission mitigations. Negotiation In Decentralization: Case Study Of China's Carbon Trading In The Power Sector is written for government policy makers, energy and environment industry investors, energy program and project managers, environment conservation specialists, university professors, researchers, and graduate students. It aims to provide a methodology and a tool that can resolve difficult negotiation issues and change a loss-loss situation to a win-win situation for key players in a decentralized system, including government policymakers, energy producers, and environment conservationists.




Living With Energy Shortfall


Book Description

This book is about the ways Americans may live in the years ahead and the forms their cities, suburbs, towns, and rural areas may take in the light of changing patterns of energy supply and societal affluence. It is written for the ultimate energy policy maker–the private citizen.




Renewable Natural Resources


Book Description

Enormous in scope, this book presents in comprehensive and logical form the sum of our national knowledge about renewable energy resources. It deals with these resources in terms of opportunities and dangers, in terms of current availability and possible expansion, in terms of how natural resources relate to human resources and needs, and in terms of their replacement potential for nonrenewable resources such as fossil fuels. It also puts domestic resources and needs into the context of international needs, supplies, and policies, emphasizing the issues facing an interdependent world and the urgent requirements perceived by countries less endowed than the United States. This is a handbook for the concerned citizen as well as for resource managers and policymakers at local, regional, and national levels. The analyses it contains underscore the fact that there are no easy answers: everything is part of an interlocking system, and every decision will affect multiple aspects of our daily lives and indeed our very existence. The authors emphasize the crucial importance of early planning, balanced management, and timely decisions, while suggesting that something more is required—a new ideology and a new educational approach.